I appreciate the author's effort to express his views via Indymedia, but find the piece to be weak. Reads more like a first-draft rant, and not particularly cogent.

I encourage you to continue contributing to the Baltimore Indymedia site.

1. Health Care: It's as if you feel Bush's plan is OK, other than the timing. A Counter-argument could be that Bush's timing is merely one of political pragmatism. No mention of what a Wall Street Journal pundit, no less, called the sleeping issue: The failed prescription drug "benefit." It is so complex that even if it was a good benefit, senior citizens can hardly figure out how to sign up for the benefit. But we know it's not a good "benefit;" it's based on crony "free market" fundamentalism, and was sold to congress using low-ball cost estimates.

2. You sya, "What right do people who never saw military service have to be sending young people to war?"

In other words, you're effectively saying "What right does anyone who does not have a military record have being president?" I know some women who have not served in combat. They seem ruled out of seeking the presidnecy by your original, cogent arguments.

3. When Bush said to a joint session of Congress on September 21, 2001, "You're either with us or you are with the terroritst," he failed in his leadership, and made the world shudder. Second-guessing what Bush was thinking in that class room on September 11, 2001 doesn't pass the "so-what" test.

4. Try this for an argument that we rarely hear: Bush warns of radio active materials falling into terrorists hands, which could be used to make a dirty bomb. After the invasion of Iraq, the US secures the Ministry of Oil, but fails to secure Iraq's primary nuclear research facility at al-Tuwaitha*. The failure to secure this well-known site strongly suggests that "anti-terrorism" is not the primary rationale for invading Iraq.

* al-Tuwaitha was made famous in 1981 when a nulcear power reactor at that site was bombed by Israel. The US failure to secure al-Tuwaitha allowed near-by villagers entry. Some villagers emptied 55-gallon drums of their contents and used them for water. The villagers later displayed signs of radiation poisoning; however, details are scant due to a subsequent media black out enforced by US military forces.

Could critique more, but....